On Suspecting al Qaeda in the Norway Attacks (UPDATED)

My friends Jim Fallows and Steve Clemons have both criticized in harsh
terms the conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin for what
they see as a fearmongering post about the possible origins of the
Norway attack. (Ta-Nehisi joins in as well.) Jim writes, in a post headlined, "The Washington Post Owes the World an Apology for This Item,"

Read it and weep. On the Post's site Jennifer Rubin first quotes the Weekly Standard, in a rushed item about the Norway horror:

>>We
don't know if al Qaeda was directly responsible for today's events, but
in all likelihood the attack was launched by part of the jihadist
hydra. Prominent jihadists have already claimedonline that the attack is payback for Norway's involvement in the war in Afghanistan.

Then she goes on to argue on her own: Moreover,
there is a specific jihadist connection here: "Just nine days ago,
Norwegian authorities filed charges against Mullah Krekar, an infamous
al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist who, with help from Osama bin Laden,
founded Ansar al Islam - a branch of al Qaeda in northern Iraq - in
late 2001."

Jim goes on to write:

No, this is a sobering reminder for those who think it's too tedious to
reserve judgment about horrifying events rather than instantly turning
them into talking points for pre-conceived views. On a per capita
basis, Norway lost twice as many people today as the U.S. did on 9/11.

Steve Clemons writes to demand that Rubin apologize personally for her post. You can read Steve here.

The question arises, then, why did Jennifer Rubin make this outrageous assertion about jihadism and Norway?

Well, perhaps it was because she was reading the Atlantic. Shortly
after the bombing in Oslo, The Atlantic re-posted on its home page a
very interesting piece from last year by Thomas Hegghammer and Dominic
Tierney entitled "Why Does al Qaeda Have a Problem With Norway?" You
can read it here.
In the piece, Hegghammer and Tierney discuss why Norway, against all
odds, has become a favored target of al Qaeda. They give several
reasons, among them fallout from the Danish cartoon crisis, and
Norway's participation in the war in Afghanistan. And then they bring
up a third possibility: The presence in Norway of the aforementioned
Mullah Krekar:

Which brings us to the third theory:
Norway's treatment of the Iraqi Kurdish Islamist Mulla Krekar. Onetime
leader of the Islamist guerrilla group Ansar al-Islam, Mulla Krekar
came to Norway as a refugee in the early 1990s and spent years secretly
shuttling between Oslo and Kurdistan until his arrest in September
2002. Although terrorism charges were dropped in 2003, he has been
officially declared a threat to national security and placed under
house arrest awaiting deportation to Iraq. For many Islamists, Mulla
Krekar's treatment demonstrates Norway's subservience to the cruel
whims of the United States.

But there is little or no
evidence that al-Qaeda cares enough about Mulla Krekar to seek
vengeance. He was never part of Bin Laden's organization, and his fate
hardly stands out in the post-9/11 world, with its Guantanamos and CIA
"black sites."

It may be pointless to search for a single
grievance to explain the recent plot. Most likely, a combination of
factors placed Norway on the jihadists' radar. In al-Qaeda's binary
worldview, Norway is part of the "Jewish-Crusader alliance." Not a
platinum member, perhaps, but a member nonetheless. If you're not with
al-Qaeda, you're with the United States.

Norway has long
been considered a legitimate but low-priority target. Frustrated by the
difficulty of striking key adversaries like Britain and the United
States, al-Qaeda seems to be moving down the food chain.

So
it would have been possible, from reading The Atlantic alone, to
suspect al Qaeda involvement in the Norway attacks. I myself suspected
this, and wrote so, in a post entitled "Mumbai comes to Norway." I suspected al Qaeda's involvement for three
reasons:1. The coming deportation of Mullah Krekar;2. The fact
that this was a dual-point attack -- downtown Oslo, and the youth camp,
almost simultenously. Multiple, simultaneous targeting is a hallmark of
al Qaeda.3. (And this is the obvious one) Europe has been under
sustained attack from Islamist terrorists for a decade. In fact, most
acts of mass terrorism in recent history have been conducted by radical
Islamists, usually under the organizational framework of al Qaeda. To
be sure, I wrote into my coverage a bunch of "to be sure" statements,
along the lines of "if this in fact a jihadist attack," and, "perhaps
this was an act of right-wing extremism," but I certainly suspected al
Qaeda involvement initially. I imagine that Norwegian intelligence also
suspected al Qaeda initially.

I don't mean to be plumping for
Jennifer Rubin here. I don't know her, but I do know she's gone after
me unfairly on numerous occasions, mostly related to the Middle East
peace process and, if memory serves (I'm having a hard time connecting
to the Web where I am, so it's difficult to search) the so-called
Ground Zero mosque controversy (I was on the "let 1000 mosques bloom"
side of the argument, she was not). And also, and not incidentally, I'm
quite happy to blame European Nazis this kind of terrorism. As readers
of this blog surely know, if there's one thing I despise more than
Islamists, it's Nazis.

The point is that I think there are
lessons here for everyone. I think it's probably best, despite the
pressures of blogging, to withhold speculation on these matters as long
as possible, though on the other hand, readers do want to real-time
thinking about breaking news stories. Another lesson, this one for the
Left: It is not perverse or absurd for normal people to think of al
Qaeda when they hear of acts of mass terrorism. It is logical, in fact,
to suspect al Qaeda. The Norway catastrophe does not negate the fact
that the majority of large-scale terrorism spectaculars by non-state
actors over the past decade have been committed by Muslims. For the
Right, Norway should underscore the point that Christians (and Hindus,
and also Jews) are just as capable of committing murderous atrocities
as Muslims.

UPDATE: I've added a link to the piece I wrote (I'm having terrible Interweb problems where I am, and this process of adding a couple of links has now been going on for a half-hour) and I want to note that another non-ideological publication, Wired, ran a piece speculating on the Islamist radical connection to the attack. It's an interesting piece. I also recommend this Joshua Foust piece, on assumptions about the bombing.

Btw, I've gotten a lot of mail along the lines of this one. "You are a racist to state that most big terrorism events over the past years have been Muslim in origin. Shame on you." Let me unpack this: One, Islam isn't a race. Two, I never blame Islam for terrorism. I blame the totalitarian political ideology of Islamism for terrorism. And three, really? When I get back to Washington, I will make a comprehensive list and post it of the most spectacular terror events of the past 20 years, but: World Trade Center 1992; the African embassies; the U.S.S. Cole; 9/11; London; Madrid, Mumbai. There are many more, obviously, but these are some of the biggest. It doesn't do anyone any good to deny reality.

Before joining The Atlantic in 2007, Goldberg was a Middle East correspondent, and the Washington correspondent, for The New Yorker. He was previouslly a correspondent for The New York Times Magazine and New York magazine. He has also written for the Jewish Daily Forward and was a columnist for The Jerusalem Post.

Goldberg's book Prisoners was hailed as one of the best books of 2006 by the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, The Progressive, Washingtonian magazine, and Playboy. He received the 2003 National Magazine Award for Reporting for his coverage of Islamic terrorism and the 2005 Anti-Defamation League Daniel Pearl Prize. He is also the winner of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists prize for best international investigative journalist; the Overseas Press Club award for best human-rights reporting; and the Abraham Cahan Prize in Journalism.

In 2001, Goldberg was appointed the Syrkin Fellow in Letters of the Jerusalem Foundation, and in 2002 he became a public-policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.